Fool's Hope
by impoeia
Summary: When fools dream, their dreams often exceed reality. When fools hope, their hopes tend to soar higher than those of an ordinary man. And when fools love, their love is without limits...Aryn Leneer/Zeerid Korr, Eleena Daru/Darth Malgus
1. Chapter 1

Star Wars does and always will belong to Mr. George Lucas. Aryn Leneer and Zeerid Korr are characters from the book _Star Wars: The Old Republic: Deceived, _by Paul S. Kemp. I am merely letting my imagination run wild.

* * *

**Fool's Hope**

"_You are a fool Aryn Leneer."_

He'd said it with such conviction, such kindness, and yes, with love as well.

Aryn Leneer was a Jedi Knight, a guardian of the Republic and the light, and love had always been something forbidden to her. Love interfered. It clouded your judgment; it distracted you from your duty. And for so many, it was the first step to the dark side.

She knew it to be the truth. All she had to do was look at the still unconscious form of Eleena to see the wisdom behind the Jedi ban on attachment. Eleena was a good person; Aryn had no doubt about that. Looking into the woman's eyes, listening to her soft, honest voice and feeling her pain, had revealed that truth to Aryn. Eleena was a good person, but love for a man steeped in the dark side had, in turn, made her an agent of the darkness as well. She killed innocent people, helped Darth Malgus perform his vile tasks. She had been part of the attack on the Jedi Temple, where Aryn's former Master, Ven Zallow, had suffered such a cruel death. Out of love, Eleena had helped to bring down the Republic. If that was not the dark side, she didn't know what was.

But who was she to judge. She had fallen into the same trap as the Twi'lek. She loved Master Zallow; there was no way around it. He had been like a father to her for most of her life, and even when she had attained the rank of Jedi Knight, their bond remained. It was why she had felt his death, why her stomach still ached and burned with the memory of a phantom lightsaber stab. And it was why she had left Alderaan and come to Coruscant. Her heart had been broken and she'd needed to know who was responsible, so that she could break him in turn. All in the name of love.

Love, however, could also lead you back to the light. She had been too angry, too hurt to see it before. The pain of Master Zallow's death had been too great and she had not seen how close she had come to crossing that perilous line between light and dark. She had been willing to kill a defenseless woman for the sake of her revenge. The darkness had loomed ahead of her so invitingly, but the same love that had driven her to the brink, had also brought her back. She had loved and still loved Master Zallow. And because of this love, she could not kill Eleena. It would be a betrayal of everything Master Zallow had taught her, of everything he had held dear. Her actions would disappoint him and she could not add that agony to the memory of his tortured expression as, already dying, he had seen Coruscant fall and had witnessed his own and the Order's failure. She loved him too much to do that.

And it was love, of course, that made her surrender to Zeerid's kiss, to even kiss him back. They'd already formed a strong bond during her time with Havoc Squad, but her status as a Jedi Knight and his being married had kept that bond firmly in the realm of friendship and camaraderie. She had been glad to feel that bond still present when they had met again on Vulta. And of course, she had felt it deepening into something more during their brief time together. Then, she had been too occupied with her grief and anger to fully appreciate Zeerid's concern for her and how that concern was only a starting point for his love.

But standing together in that hangar, watching him struggle with his desire to remain with her and to return to his daughter, the last of her blindness had been lifted. And in the resulting clarity, she had found the passion to return his kiss and the strength to send him away. He belonged with Arra, who deserved to have her father's guiding presence during the coming years. Just like she had had Master Zallow.

Aryn watched Zeerid walk away from her, his back and shoulders stiff with the effort to keep from turning around and looking back at her. She could still feel his lips on hers. Love could be the path to the dark side, yes. It could cause you to make selfish decisions, or to turn a blind eye to the faults of the one you loved. But love could also lead you to acts of selflessness. Eleena had been willing to sacrifice everything for Darth Malgus: her freedom, her peace of mind, her life. And Aryn was willing to watch the man she loved walk away from her, towards what would hopefully be a brighter future filled with his daughter's love and the peace of a Dantooine farm. She was a Jedi, acts of selflessness were part of her being, of her understanding of self, and so she did not cry as Zeerid disappeared into the _Dragonfly _drop ship.

He had called her a fool and she told him that maybe she was. But what was so bad about being a fool? Didn't fools sometimes harbor the sweetest of hopes? She turned towards the hangar doors, sensing the quickly approaching maelstrom that was Darth Malgus. She could die here. Probably she would. But she could carry the memory of Zeerid's kiss and her love for him with her into the battle.

Aryn Leneer was no longer a Jedi Knight. She had left the Order in the wake of her grief to confront the man who had taken away her beloved Master. She knew that, even if she lived through this fight, she would not return to the Order. She had changed too much, had come to acknowledge that forbidden emotion – love – too much to turn back to the doctrine of non-attachment. Aryn held on to the memory of those she loved and let that certainty guide her through the eddies of the Force. Maybe, just maybe, she could join Zeerid and Arra on their farm on Dantooine, perhaps become a farmer herself. It sounded like a good life.

Peace and calm settled over her and as Aryn found her focus, she prepared herself to face Darth Malgus once more. Not in anger or hate this time, but with love in her heart, and a fool's hope in her mind.

* * *

**Author's note: **I really liked the book _Deceived _and couldn't help myself writing this little OneShot about Aryn after being kissed by Zeerid. Those two are a wonderful couple. I know the OneShot doesn't really belong in this category, but I couldn't find a better place for it. If someone has a suggestion where it might make better sense to have this posted, please feel free to PM me. I am always open to suggestions and requests.


	2. Chapter 2

Fool's Love

There were those within and without the Empire, who thought her the biggest fool alive. They reasoned that only a fool would continue in the service of a Sith Lord; a servant in a social hierarchy that thought of her only as a slave. She could have had her freedom, could have left the Empire and started a new life in the Republic, where she could be a full citizen, with rights and options. She could have even done it with his help. Even his greatest enemies could see that Darth Malgus had a soft spot for her. If she'd asked, he probably would have let her go.

But for Eleena Daru, things just weren't that easy. As a Twi'lek born into the Empire, she had been destined for the life of a slave. And as a slave in the slave pens of Geonosis, that life would have been very short indeed. But then he had come, emerging out of the red Geonosian dust like some dark avenger. He had saved her from the brutal oppression of her master, had taken her under his wing and taught her how to fight. Though he had kept her as a servant, he had freed her from slavery and by his side she could walk tall and proud for the first time in her life.

And then, she had fallen in love with him.

The idea of falling in love with a Sith Lord would have caused ridicule among most beings. The common consensus was that a Sith could not love. They were beings of the dark side, of hate and anger. Love would be a weakness intolerable in their power-based society. But she knew differently. Darth Malgus – Veradun – loved her. He never said so and she knew she could never expect to hear those words from him, but his love for her was one of the great sureties of her life. Just like her love for him.

And because she was privy to this forbidden emotion, she also knew that Veradun was not the monster most people saw him as. There was good in him, she knew that as surely as she knew that he loved her. That good was just buried beneath years of Sith indoctrination. Beneath the hate and the anger, there beat the heart of a good and honorable man. All he needed was someone to show him the way, to teach him peace, where others had only taught him war.

Eleena believed that she could be that person. She believed that she could gentle him through her love, because he had already proven that he could be gentle with her. She could act as his conscience, be his moral compass. It was a hope she clung to, like the hope that one day the fighting would be over and she and Veradun could live together in peace.

It was because of this hope that she had first become afraid when the female Jedi had confronted her. It wasn't the prospect of dying that frightened her. She had faced that possibility too many times. No, it was her fear of what would happen to Veradun after she died, that had caused her to flinch at the sight of the Jedi's lightsaber. If she died, Veradun would die with her and leave Darth Malgus behind.

So when she opened her eyes next and found herself not dead, but alive and in the arms of her lover, Eleena could have wept for joy. Particularly when she saw how he looked at her, when she felt how carefully he held her. This was the man she loved, the man she had such high hopes for.

He told her that the Jedi was gone, and that she would be safe. She knew that already, of course. She was with him. She was always safe in his arms.

"I knew you loved me." She told him, because it was the truth.

"I do," he told her and the words made her smile and her hopes rose to unprecedented heights. He had said the words she thought she would never hear. He had laid his heart bare before her and she felt her dreams for their future become just that tiny bit more solid. When she saw the tears in his eyes, she couldn't quite understand their source.

"What is wrong, my love?"

"That I love you is what is wrong, Eleena."

"Veradun," she wanted to tell him how silly he was being, how loving someone was never wrong. It was a precious thing, a powerful thing. Love could change the face of the world, or the soul of a man.

When he stood, she thought he would extend his hand to her and help her to her feet. She wasn't sure she could; she felt dizzy and there was a distinct throb in her temple, but she would – for him.

His lightsaber pierced her body and drove itself through her heart – and all of her dreams. For a moment, she couldn't grasp the reality of the situation, even as the heat of the plasma blade scorched her flesh and burned her heart. She couldn't look away from his face; the face of the man she loved, of the man who had killed her.

In those brief seconds in which life clung to a body without a living heart, it came to Eleena that she really had been foolish. She should have known that her love alone would not be enough to redeem the man standing over her. She was just a woman, a Twi'lek slave who had first caught his pity and then what remained of his heart. Her foolish dreams of peace were not enough to stand against the raging storm of the Empire and the darkness that ran through his veins. He would have needed more than that. A man needed solid dreams to hold onto, when he wanted to make his way through this galaxy, so ravaged by war. Her dreams were too flimsy to offer a steady hold, her hopes too high to be grasped by fingers used to the solid weight of a lightsaber.

She tried to tell him this, that she understood, but found her voice had left her. She saw the tears in his eyes and wanted to weep with him. By his own hand, Veradun had done what the Jedi had failed to do. He had killed her and had in extension killed what had been left of the good man she so dearly loved. He died even as she died; bleeding out through the tears that ran down Darth Malgus' ravaged face.

She took the image of those tears with her. Perhaps, in another life and another time, they could be together. Even as she died, Eleena Daru preferred to be a fool to being a woman without hope.

* * *

**Author's Note: **It just wouldn't stay a OneShot. This is what happens when the muse gets all worked up. Memo to Self: next time, lock away the cookie-dough ice cream.


End file.
